The Onset of Sexual Maturity
by philalethia
Summary: Puberty: the period during which the onset of sexual maturity occurs. FujiRyo


Ryoma knew something was wrong the moment he woke up. Partly because he was up a whole hour before his alarm was set to go off, but mostly because he woke up with a tight ache between his legs and an intense desire to _do things _about it.

He sat perfectly still in his bed, fingers clenched around his sheets, and played tennis games in his head to pass the time and calm the chaos in his head. It was only after Karupin pawed his way up Ryoma's leg and settled in his lap, his belly resting on the center of Ryoma's discomfort (and triggering a sudden and overwhelming memory of his dream, which involved fingers pressed into his thighs and hair tickling the skin), that he realized getting out of bed would be the best option.

Ryoma arrived at school for morning practice fifty minutes earlier than usual. The tennis courts were deserted, which was somewhat surprising. He had half-expected to find Tezuka already there; Ryoma had difficulty imagining Tezuka doing anything that didn't involve tennis.

He changed as slowly as he could, which wasn't really all that slow since he was craving the feel of a racquet against his palm. Ryoma left the locker room with a tennis ball and his racquet, intent on finding a wall to practice with.

"Oh, Echizen. You're here early."

Ryoma turned to find Fuji smiling at him, his tennis bag hanging from his shoulder. Ryoma blinked several times and took a shaky step back, because he was distressingly aware of Fuji's hair color and the way his fingers looked against the strap of his bag. Suddenly it was all too familiar.

"Echizen," Fuji said, his smile falling from his lips. "Is something wrong? You look very—" He took a step closer, and Ryoma stumbled backward.

Something _was _wrong. Something was horribly wrong, because suddenly Ryoma was noticing the shape of Fuji's mouth, which was far outside his normal range of observation. But he couldn't exactly tell Fuji that his open lips and the tongue behind them were making him ache in the worst possible way.

"No," said Ryoma quickly, backing away. "I'm fine."

He retreated to the water fountain, where he intended to dunk his head in the spray of water. Fuji didn't follow, and Ryoma spent the rest of morning practice very carefully avoiding him.

---

During a practice match with Kaidoh three days later, Ryoma mistakenly stole a glance at Fuji, who was playing Kikumaru. As his arm rose for a smash, Fuji's shirt slipped up several inches, and Ryoma caught the slightest glimpse of skin.

His Drive B struck Kaidoh right between the eyes, and Kaidoh's bandana flew off his head as he crashed into the ground. It took Ryoma several moments to realize what he'd done, and when he did, he flushed and glared down at the strings of his racquet like they were the cause of every problem he'd ever had.

A shadow fell over his shoe, and he glanced up to see Tezuka staring at him, his lips pursed in what might have been concern.

"Echizen," he said carefully. "Is there something on your mind?"

"Not really," answered Ryoma, scowling.

Oishi had abandoned his own practice match and was crouched beside Kaidoh, speaking to him frantically about hospitals and concussions. Kaidoh replaced his bandana and looked too angry to be capable of verbal response.

"Well," said Tezuka. "Don't get careless."

It was a wise piece of advice, even if Ryoma didn't quite understand how it pertained to the situation, and he accepted it gratefully.

Momoshiro shouted his congratulations for "kicking the viper's ass," and Kaidoh hissed violently back as he prepared to serve. It was a fast and powerful serve that nearly stole the racquet from Ryoma's grasp. Ryoma vowed that he would never look at Fuji again.

He did, approximately forty minutes later in the locker room when Fuji was adjusting his school uniform. Ryoma promptly lost his grip on his bag, and it hit Kaidoh, who was bent over and tying his shoes, on the head.

Momoshiro laughed, and Ryoma ran.

---

It became evident very quickly that things were beginning to spiral out of control. Ryoma turned around in the locker room one day to find Fuji putting on his shirt and was struck with the sudden, unnatural urge to _do things _to his chest. It was then that Ryoma realized that he would have to seek outside help, which terrified him beyond belief, but both his concentration and his ability to competently play tennis were suffering horribly, and even Karupin seemed to be worried about him.

The only people Ryoma particularly trusted were the other regulars, and so Ryoma narrowed down his choices of confidants from there.

Fuji was obviously out, and Kaidoh wouldn't likely care about Ryoma's problem. Kikumaru and Momoshiro, on the other hand, would care too much, and it would be all over the whole tennis club within a matter of hours. Oishi, too, would care too much except in a much different way, and Ryoma would suffocate under the weight of his worrying. Ryoma couldn't imagine how Kawamura would be able to help. And Tezuka, well. He didn't even want to think about what Tezuka's reaction would be.

Which left Inui. A terrifying idea, but Ryoma was desperate.

During lunch time one day, he sought out Inui and found him in the lab with several beakers of fluorescent liquid congregated around him. Inui, as predicted, was all too willing to assist Ryoma.

He gave Ryoma a training menu, which Ryoma was unendingly grateful for until he actually looked at it and realized that it was basically a set of instructions on masturbation techniques. Then he tore it into tiny pieces and burned it and trained himself never to think of it again, ever.

Next Inui came up with a special drink that he called "Inui's Special Wet Dream Juice." It was bubbling and suspiciously colorless, and had Ryoma been feeling like his normal self, he wouldn't have been anywhere in a five mile radius of it. But he wasn't feeling anywhere near his normal self, and so he took the glass from Inui's outstretched hand, lifted it up as if to say, "Cheers," and drank it all in one gulp.

When he woke up, approximately twenty minutes later, he was hopeful. His head was spinning and his stomach lurched continually for almost ten minutes straight, and he thought that surely Inui's Special Wet Dream Juice had done the trick.

Later when he walked into the locker room to change for practice, the first thing Ryoma saw was Fuji, already in his regular jersey, bent over his shoes, and something in Ryoma's chest tightened before his heart started to pound harshly in his ears.

When Inui asked him after practice about his "condition," Ryoma told him, deadpan, exactly where the older boy could shove his training menu and his juice, and then stalked off.

---

Ryoma realized that something was seriously wrong when he started dreading practice. Of course this had little to do with Fuji and a lot to do with Inui, who had taken a deep and rather upsetting investment in curing Ryoma's problem. As such he chose to ignore Ryoma's threats and frequently found it necessary to corner Ryoma during practice and bombard him with alternate training menus and, occasionally, a list of entirely too personal questions that caused Ryoma to stutter and stare at his shoes.

What's more was that Tezuka was growing less and less lenient about the amount of practice time that the two wasted and had started booming chastisements across the tennis courts. Now alerted to Ryoma's sudden involvement with Inui, the other regulars responded with various degrees of confusion, and Ryoma had taken to slipping in and out of the locker room quickly before anyone could confront him.

All of this Ryoma found exceptionally annoying, and he spent a lot of time wishing that he could twist serve a tennis ball right down Inui's throat.

Like now, for instance.

"Ah, Echizen," said Inui, calming pushing his glasses up his nose with one finger, as though he hadn't been guarding the locker room door in anticipation of Ryoma's exit. "I have something to discuss with you, so perhaps you could step over this way—"

"No," snapped Ryoma, clutching his tennis racquet for comfort, and stepped in the direction opposite where Inui was trying to direct him. But then he spotted Horio and his cohorts a short distance away, eyeing him like hungry sharks, and so he let himself be led far away from the tennis courts.

"Now." Inui opened the notebook in his hands and paged through its contents. "I've devised a new menu." He produced a sheet of paper and handed it to Ryoma, who accepted it with his free hand, glanced at it, and turned pink. "I have personally tested each of these extensively, and I think you will find them effective."

Ryoma's mind supplied an image that caused him to feel ill. His fingers gripped the paper so tightly that it started to tear.

"Inui, Echizen!" Tezuka bellowed from his position in the entrance to the tennis courts. "You are late for practice."

Ryoma all but threw himself away from Inui's presence, balling up the new "menu" and imprisoning it against his palm. He clung desperately to his tennis racquet.

As he entered the tennis courts, his eyes caught Fuji's, and he stumbled. Fuji's lips were pressed in a thin line, and his eyes, open, seemed intent on peeling apart the layers of Ryoma's mind and discovering what it contained.

---

"Inui," said Fuji, approaching him with a seemingly pleasant smile that caused Inui to adjust his glasses uncomfortably. "I think maybe you can help me with something."

Fuji's sudden interest in Inui and Ryoma's exchanges had not escaped Inui's notice, and in fact he had been expecting a confrontation for approximately 3.6 days. "Something?"

"Yes," answered Fuji as he leaned back on the chain link fence beside Inui, and together they watched as Ryoma returned Kaidoh's Snake with a self-satisfied smirk. Fuji's smile, if anything, widened. "I've noticed that you and our Echizen have…_grown closer_ as of late."

"Ah," said Inui. "Yes. I've been working on a special training menu for him."

"Oh?" Fuji sounded interested, and Inui raised his eyes from his data collection to find Fuji's smile suspiciously gone from his lips. "What sort of training menu?"

Inui considered his options. Fuji had a keen ability to detect lies. And he generally did not enjoy being lied to. But still, Echizen would not enjoy having what he had confessed in confidence exposed to the person he feared most.

"Inui," Fuji said, his eyelids sliding open to reveal irises so blue they could chill even Inui to the core. "Think very carefully about your response."

Inui did. He reminded himself that Echizen's general irritability and anxiety had increased approximately 32 in the past two weeks and that the team's overall state had suffered 9.3 as a result. And if Inui's menu wasn't helping Echizen, then perhaps he would try a different approach.

---

"Echizen!"

Ryoma turned, looking vaguely annoyed at being interrupted on his quiet walk home, but when he spotted Fuji jogging toward him, waving cheerily, his expression quickly morphed into one of great distress.

"Fuji-senpai," he answered, longing suddenly for his hat that would cover his eyes and maybe the faint pink of his cheeks. "What are you doing here?"

"A little bird with poor eyesight and a fondness for data just told me something interesting. Something of which I was not aware," Fuji informed Ryoma, whose expression had morphed once more, this time to abject horror. "Which is very shocking since I make it a point to be aware of everything that involves you. Are you feeling all right, Echizen? You look like you might faint."

Ryoma thought that he just might; his head certainly felt light enough, and strange colorful spots were starting to cloud his vision. He thought the latter was just as well since the spots obscured his view of Fuji, which was aggravating an already serious problem.

"Something interesting?" he repeated hazily, trying to feign a kind of bored confusion and failing.

"Yes. Something about a certain _problem _you've been having."

Ryoma decided that he would kill Inui, slowly and painfully. Perhaps he would shove a whole tennis racquet the place up Inui where Inui had once suggested Ryoma stick his fingers.

Fuji took a large step closer, and Ryoma would have stumbled backward several steps to compensate if two hands hadn't have grabbed his waist to keep him in place.

"Really, Ryoma-kun, you could have told me you felt that way."

Fuji jerked him forward by his waist then and kissed him. Ryoma's hands shot up from his sides with the intent of pushing him away, but when his fingers closed on Fuji's shoulder, they somehow were stuck there. So he let himself be, and when Fuji's lips started moving, Ryoma moved his own hesitantly in return. When Fuji pulled away, Ryoma had this awful fear that his mouth would try to follow. But it didn't, and instead Ryoma tasted his own lips and waited.

"You should have come to me about your problem sooner, Ryoma-kun," said Fuji, looking—if Ryoma had to attach an emotion to his smile—positively delighted. "I could have solved it a long time ago."

Ryoma didn't fight the hand that skimmed his lower back or the kiss that followed.


End file.
